A very Happy New Year to all our readers old and new – in the words of our current editorial over on the PaperTigers website, all of us on the PaperTigers team wish you a 2010 filled with books, peace and understanding!

…And in order to help you ensure that you have plenty of books to read, it’s time to launch our Reading the World Challenge for 2010. You may have noticed that this year we have a wonderful new widget (Thank you, Eun Ha!): please do use it on your blog if you have one; and if you don’t, do let us know about your book-choices – we would love to feature them here. I know there are many book-challenges out there but do join us if you can.

The criteria will be the same as last year, with one slight difference. You can choose at what point between January and June your 7-month period begins, in order to have completed the Challenge by the end of the year. So here’s what we have to do:

Choose one book from/about/by or illustrated by someone from each of the seven continents – that’s:

Africa
Antarctica
Asia
Australasia
Europe
North America
South America

Have the books read aloud to you or read them yourself; share them as part of a book-group or in class. Combine your choices with other reading challenges.

The books can be picture-books, poetry, fiction, non-fiction… the choice is yours.

You can find lots of ideas in the PaperTigers Reviews and Reading Lists sections – and if you have any ideas you’d like to suggest to people joining in from different continents, please do!

Happy Reading!

And P.S. If anyone would like the code for adding the button to their blog, please email me – marjorie(at)papertigers(dot)org – and thank you to all of you who have already taken it for getting the word out…

And, Eva – WOW – that is the most fabulous list you’ve put together. If anyone’s looking for ideas of books for adults / crossover to read, head on over and take a look! I’ve already picked out a few for myself…

I’ve just discovered Paper Tigers. Reading the World is a wonderful idea. I’m an author and have a chapter book biography set in Japan coming out in March: Peacebuilders–Daisaku Ikeda & Josei Toda, Buddhist Leaders. You can check out its website here: http://www.foresthillpublishing.com/peacebuilders

Well done to everyone who completed the 2010 Reading the World Challenge – probably better than we did… I hope you’ll be joining us in 2011 too. I’ll be posting details very soon – it will be slightly different this year. So Kieren, Sandhya and Myra, I hope you’ll take part too